1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an ice maker for fitting into a door of a cooling or freezing device.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Refrigerators for domestic use are nowadays increasingly supplied with built-in ice makers. The ice maker serves to produce cube-shaped ice pieces or ice pieces of other shapes, which can typically be dispensed via an ice-piece dispenser integrated into a door of the refrigerator. The ice pieces are produced in an ice-making tray, which has a plurality of cavities for producing one ice piece each.
While in some refrigerator models the ice maker is situated in the body of the refrigerator, in other refrigerator models the ice maker is arranged in the door of the cabinet. When the ice maker is arranged in the door there is the problem that, after the ice-making tray has been filled with fresh water, the water can spill out of the tray when the door is moved quickly and jerkily if the water has not yet solidified to form ice.
Protecting walls can be provided as spillage protection in front of, at the side of or/and behind the ice-making tray, which protecting walls ensure that water spilling out of the tray is guided back into the tray and does not drip down the door or even spill into the cooling chamber of the refrigerator. Although such protecting walls can provide satisfactory spillage protection, a problem which can arise in connection with rotatably mounted ice-making trays, which are rotated about an axis of rotation in order to eject the finished ice pieces, is that ice bridges form between the tray and the surrounding protecting walls. Such ice bridges can impede or even block rotation of the ice-making tray. In some circumstances, this can result in damage to a rotary drive motor for the ice-making tray.